The Joiner King (20 page)

Only Zekk did not agree. Jedi saw similar cruelties everywhere they were called in the galaxy. But it was their responsibility to remain dispassionate, to cut through the veil of obscuring emotion and find the core of the problem. If they allowed themselves to seek retribution rather than peace, how could they bring a lasting solution to
any
conflict?

As much as Jaina wanted to make the Chiss pay for the lives they were taking, she had to agree with Zekk. So far, this had remained a low-intensity conflict. But if the Jedi turned it into a killing fight, that would end. A simple border clash would erupt into all-out war, and the carnage would be staggering.

The Chiss task force entered the gap between Ruu and Zvbo. Two of the four defoliators left the main formation with their clawcraft escorts and turned toward the moons. They were met by clouds of defenders, from the Saras nest on Ruu and the Alaala on Zvbo. Too small to be visible at even this relatively short distance, the dartships were nevertheless numerous enough to spread hazy stains of gray across Gyuel’s blue face.

Jaina had barely formulated a plan to meet them before Tahiri shot ahead in the sleek little skiff that Zonama Sekot had grown for her. A living ship, its three-lobed hull glowed a deep, sea green against the star.

Jacen followed a moment later in his ChaseX, which, like Tahiri’s living ship, could not be concealed from the Chiss sensors. The Jedi all understood what Jaina intended. Tahiri, who was not subject to StealthX comm restrictions, opened a channel to the Taat dartships still swarming around Jaina and the other StealthXs.

“ReyaTaat, bring the dartships and follow us. We need to make this look real.”

“We are to create a diversion?” A Chiss Joiner who insisted on being called by both the nest name and her own, ReyaTaat freely admitted that she had been sent by Chiss Intelligence to spy on the Qoribu nests. Her allegiance had changed—she claimed—when the Taat discovered her hiding in near starvation
and started to bring her food. “The stealth fighters will divide and strike the defoliators by surprise?”

“Something like that.”

Though all of the Qoribu nests seemed to have complete faith in Reya, the Jedi were less trusting, and Tahiri was not about to reveal their plan.

When neither the dartships nor Reya’s little scoutcraft started after her, Jacen added, “You need to come
now.
You’re drawing attention to the StealthXs.”

“Taat is not happy with this plan,” Reya said. “The Chiss have changed tactics, and the nest worries they are trying to lure the Jedi into a trap.”

Jaina’s suspicions about Reya began to deepen, and Tahiri asked, “The nests worry, or you do?”

“We speak for the nests in this,” Reya said. “And we know the Chiss.”

“You
are
the Chiss.” Tahiri’s skiff slowed, and she added, “Maybe you’re less worried about the Jedi than about your old friends.”

“We are
Taat
,” Reya insisted. “But we were Chiss once, and we understand how dangerous it is to underestimate them.”

The Saras dartships met the first defoliator and swallowed it in a cloud of gray, whirling slivers. The defoliator continued toward Ruu’s amber disk, engulfed in a halo of silver sparkles as the insect pilots hurled their tiny fighters against its shields. The Force grew heavy with anguish and admiration for their sacrifice, and Jaina was surprised to feel her own throat closing with emotion. Usually, she felt nothing when she entered battle, not fear or excitement or dread. Usually, she was too focused on the fighting to experience any emotions at all.

The Chiss clawcraft circled back and began to make runs along the length of the defoliator’s hull, driving the Saras dartships off and giving the larger vessel time to refresh its shields. The StealthXs had to make their move
now
, or they would never reach the defoliators in time. Jaina pushed her throttles forward and broke for the amber moon, Ruu. Tesar, the second best pilot on the team, started for Zvbo, while Zekk, Alema, and Lowbacca
all began a high arcing maneuver that would drop them down on the last two defoliators.

“ReyaTaat, the Jedi are starting their run.” Jacen’s voice was sharp. “And we’re not going to be much of a diversion alone.”

There was a moment of silence, then a vague tide of alarm rose in the Force. “Slow down!” Reya commed. “The dartships can’t catch you!”

Jaina checked her tactical display and found a blue cloud of Taat dartships sweeping up from the bottom of the display, following Reya’s little scout-lancet after Tahiri. At the top of the screen, both Chiss defoliators were fully engulfed in swarms of Saras and Alaala, with the curved horizons of Ruu and Zvbo hanging high in the corners. The main body of the Chiss task force remained in the center of the display, the clawcraft escorts hanging back just far enough to make the last two defoliators an inviting target.

What were they up to?

Jaina’s astromech changed scale, and suddenly her tactical display was a mass of “friendly” blips—the Saras dartships—whirling around the defoliator she had targeted. The friendly blips were winking out by the dozens.

Jaina checked her estimated time to attack. Five seconds, but she sensed that Tesar needed seven. She armed two proton torpedoes, then added a sweeping curve to her approach and came in behind the battle.

Outside her cockpit, space was a tightly wound ball of orange rocket trails swirling around the blue glow of the defoliator’s big ion drives. A pair of dartships blossomed in scarlet as they exploded against the shields of an oncoming clawcraft, but a third collided with its wing.

The clawcraft pilot lost control and went corkscrewing into Ruu’s thin atmosphere. Assuming he survived the crash, Jaina knew, he would be taken into the Saras nest and treated as a welcome guest. Unless they were clearly being attacked, none of the Qoribu nests seemed to have any real concept of
enemy.

Jaina tried to pick a route through the mad tangle of dartships, but it was like trying to avoid drops in a rainstorm. Two seconds from her launching point, a Saras bounced off her
shields, and her canopy went black to prevent her from being blinded by the white flash of an exploding rocket.

By the time the tinting paled an instant later, three Chiss clawcraft were coming at Jaina head-on, pouring a steady torrent of cannon bolts in her general direction. She did a half-roll slip, taking two hits on her forward shield as she passed through the third fighter’s stream of fire, then loosed her first torpedo.

Nothing if not well trained, the Chiss adjusted their aim instantly, targeting on the weapon’s origination point. Jaina’s forward shields flared into a white wavering wall of heat, and shrieking overload alarms filled the cockpit. She released the second torpedo and jinked hard to port. More Chiss brought their craft to bear, barely grazing her with a blue inferno that was nevertheless enough to bring her shields down with a final, warning screech. The air grew acrid with the smell of fused circuits, and warning messages that Jaina could not read through the smoke began to scroll down her status display.

“Just keep the masking systems up, Sneaky,” Jaina ordered her droid, taking the StealthX through an unpredictable coil of reversing rolls. “If those guys get a sensor read on us, we’ll really be in trouble.”

The droid replied with a cynical whistle.

Jaina continued to maneuver until, a second later, the torrent of cannon fire ceased for an instant and she knew the Chiss had been momentarily blinded by her passing torpedoes. She pushed the stick up and to the left, circling out of the dartship tangle as quickly as she could and climbing for the stars, where her dark craft would not be silhouetted against Qoribu’s scintillating rings.

A pair of bright dots flared through the smoke in Jaina’s cockpit, and she leaned closer to her tactical display. Two shrinking circles of light indicated that her proton torpedoes had detonated where she intended, just behind the defoliator’s thrust nozzles. The big ship was already beginning to swing off course, rising into a tight banking turn that would carry it into Qoribu’s gravity well if the crew did not regain control soon.

Jaina allowed herself a moment of self-congratulation—just so her wingmates would know she had completed her assignment—
then the Saras swarm began to drift back toward Ruu, leaving the crippled defoliator to recover control and flee. Even now, after two months of living and fighting with the Taat, Jaina was awed by the insects’ complete lack of spite. Once a threat had been turned away, they never attempted to cause it more harm.

Jaina’s admiration was mirrored in the Force by that of the other Jedi, and her thoughts turned to the other three defoliators.

“Give me an overall sitrep, Sneaky. And clean this smoke out of the cockpit.” Jaina finally realized that she was reflexively using the Force to keep from coughing. “I can barely see my display.”

A valve hissed open and cleared the air, then Jaina was hit by a wave of shock so sudden and powerful it reminded her of the time her X-wing had been blown from under her at Kalarba. She automatically began a systems sweep, but knew before her gaze reached the life-support readout that the alarm had come to her through the meld, from the three Jedi she had sent to stop the middle two defoliators.

The tactical display showed the other three defoliators also drifting dead in space. But a new vessel had appeared on the far side of the battle, well positioned to prevent the Taat—and Jedi—from returning to their home nest. It was simultaneously bleeding clawcraft into space and sweeping the area with tractor beams, gathering up dartships like flitnats in a net.

“Victory
-class Star Destroyer.” Jaina turned toward the battle zone and poured on velocity. “Where did
that
come from?”

Sneaky let out a defensive tweet, then replayed a high-speed version of the last ten seconds of tactical record. The vessel had simply appeared a few moments ago,
after
the Jedi had disabled the defoliation. Jaina grew instantly cold and emotionless inside.

“Cloaked.”

She wasted no time asking herself why she had failed to anticipate the tactic—capable enemies
always
surprised you—but her thoughts did leap to the implications. Had the Star Destroyer been an escort, it would have revealed itself as soon as the nests moved against the defoliators. Instead, it had waited until the
Jedi launched their proton torpedoes—betraying both their presence and their general location. It had come for
them
—using their own subterfuge against them.

It had been one of Jag Fel’s favorite tactics, when they had flown together against the Yuuzhan Vong. Jaina reached out toward the Star Destroyer, searching for his familiar presence, but could not find him among all the beings on the vessel—at least not in the middle of the battle.

A burst of dismay swept through the Force, then a soft growl arose inside Jaina’s head. Lowbacca was caught in one of the tractor beams. She wondered how bad, then had a brief vision in which dartships were flying past in a black, swirling wall and the cockpit was filled with the screaming whine of overloaded fusial thrust engines.

Jaina felt Tesar reaching out to Lowbacca, urging him to hold on until he and Jaina could get there. They might be able to shut down the tractor beam if they could destroy its generators. But none of the Jedi knew what the tractor beam generators on a Chiss Star Destroyer looked like … or where to find them.

Lowbacca thought they were being foolish; that they would only get themselves captured by trying something so risky. The best way to help him was to avoid falling into the Chiss trap themselves.

A swell of anger rose in the Force. Jaina was still too far from the battle to see anything more than a hazy cloud of dartships silhouetted against Qoribu’s gleaming rings, but the tactical display showed more than a dozen clawcraft swarming Jacen and Tahiri, methodically herding them toward the Star Destroyer’s tractor beams. Supported by a throng of Taat, they were fighting back valiantly, opening one hole after the other in the enemy formation. The Chiss always managed to cut them off and drive them back toward the sweeping tractor beams.

Then a clawcraft designator vanished. Another turned yellow and spiraled through the ring system and out of the system. Jaina felt Alema and Zekk urging Tahiri and Jacen to accelerate through the gap. Two of three clawcraft moving to cut them off also lost control and flew out of the battle, then Tahiri and Jacen were free, pulling away from their pursuers and weaving a
crooked path among the few enemy fighters still in a position to attack.

Tahiri’s gratitude flooded the Force, but quickly changed to astonishment when a clawcraft behind her exploded in a flash of static. A second one vanished an instant later, then a third turned yellow on Jaina’s display and broke into two parts.

Tahiri’s shock was overpowered by Alema’s glee, then almost instantly by Zekk’s righteous fury.

This is wrong
! Zekk raged. He was furious with Alema; she was killing for revenge!

But Alema did not think so. She felt she was only killing to teach them a lesson, to make them understand there were consequences.

Jaina added her anger to Zekk’s. Alema had violated the unspoken rules of the conflict. She had killed without purpose. When the Chiss reviewed their battle vids, they would feel bound to retaliate in kind.

Alema didn’t care, and Taat seemed to agree. The hundreds of dartships not yet swept up in the tractor beams began to coalesce in tightly knit balls, moving with eerie precision into the path of oncoming clawcraft. Chiss fighters began to explode as though they were crashing into asteroids. The conflict was turning into an all-out battle.

Sensing Jaina’s alarm, Tahiti opened a comm channel. “Reya-Taat, call off the dartships! Our last attacks were mistakes.”

“They did not feel like mistakes,” Reya countered. “They felt good.”

“This battle is getting out of hand,” Tahiri responded, echoing Jaina’s feelings. “Reya was Chiss. She
knows
what will happen if you continue.”